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Summary of the impact

Deborah Cameron's research focuses on the relationship between gender and
language, using sociolinguistic evidence and contemporary theories of
gender and identity to examine and challenge widespread beliefs about the
differing verbal abilities and behaviour of men and women. Through
broadcasting, public speaking and engagement with non-academic
professional groups, including secondary school English teachers, Cameron
communicates the results of her (and others') research to a broad audience
in Britain and internationally. She has raised awareness of
sociolinguistic approaches to gender, has provided resources for
professionals concerned with issues of equality and diversity, and has
contributed to the public understanding of science.

Underpinning research

The underpinning research is a body of sociolinguistic work on the
relationship between language and gender - a subject that is not only of
perennial interest to a cross-section of the general public, but has
implications for policy and practice in a number of professional fields,
including politics (where women's under-representation has been linked to
the question of their competence/ confidence and their acceptability as
public speakers), psychology/counselling (which often addresses questions
relating to cross-sex communication in personal relationships), and
education (where there has been considerable concern about the
underachievement of boys, particularly in relation to literacy and those
parts of the school curriculum which depend heavily on language skills).
Cameron has been actively engaged in research and scholarship on language
and gender since the mid-1980s, but the research relevant to this case
study was carried out after her appointment to the Chair of Language and
Communication at the University of Oxford in 2004.

The research is of two main kinds. The first involves detailed analysis
of gender-related patterns in naturally-occurring spoken language data,
while the second explores the history and current expressions of language
ideologies and folk beliefs pertaining to gender, drawing attention to
variation in the prevailing beliefs across cultures and over time, and
where possible setting those beliefs alongside relevant empirical findings
in order to assess the degree to which they are justified by evidence.
Both kinds of research are exemplified by the papers collected in On
Language and Sexual Politics (Cameron 2006). Most recently Cameron
has undertaken a detailed assessment of the increasingly influential
contemporary scientific narratives which propose a biological basis for
male-female differences in linguistic behaviour. This work, presented most
fully in an article in the peer-reviewed international journal Applied
Linguistics (Cameron 2010), argues that neo-Darwinian accounts are
highly selective in their use of sociolinguistic evidence, and in many
cases depend on linguistically naive assumptions that lead to
misinterpretations of the evidence. Cameron has also investigated the
uptake of these accounts in old and new media, looking particularly at the
ways in which the reporting and discussion of sex-difference science tend
to amplify errors and misinterpretations (e.g. Cameron 2008).

The most general insight that emerges from this work is that both
scientific and popular discourses typically overstate the extent of
male-female linguistic differences and offer over-simple explanations for
them.

References to the research

1. Cameron, D (2006) On Language and Sexual Politics, London:
Routledge.
Published by an academic press which required peer review.

2. Cameron, D (2006) `Theorizing the female voice in public contexts', in
J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts.
Palgrave-Macmillan.
Published by an academic press requiring peer review

4. Cameron, D (2008) `Dreaming of Genie: Language, gender difference and
identity on the web', in S. Johnson and A. Ensslin (eds.) Language in
the Media. Continuum.
Published by an academic press requiring peer review

5. Cameron, D (2010) `Gender, language and the new biologism', Applied
Linguistics 31(2): 173-92. Published in the leading international
peer reviewed journal of applied linguistics.

6. Cameron, D (2012) `More heat than light? Sex difference science and
the study of language'.
(Vancouver: Ronsdale Press). Published text of the Garnett Sedgwick
Memorial Lectures, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2012 for
which Cameron was invited speaker (the first linguist to be asked to give
this prestigious series).

Details of the impact

Given the social salience of gender, and the potential for our beliefs
about it to perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes and justify discrimination,
it is important that the findings of language and gender research, and the
arguments they give rise to, should be put in the public domain,
contextualized and made accessible to those without specialist linguistic
knowledge. Cameron has done just that, bringing to public attention the
erroneous nature of many common assumptions about male and female language
use, enabling more informed debate, and dislodging some entrenched myths.
In 2007 Cameron published The Myth of Mars and Venus, a book
written at her own instigation for a general audience but based firmly on
academic research, including substantial reference to her own. The book
gained significant media exposure. Reviewers for newspapers, journals,
blogs, and customer feedback websites regularly commented on the force and
wit with which it debunked the account of gender and language popularised
by John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus - a myth
that, at the time Cameron entered the debate, had `mutated to scientific
fact' (Daily Telegraph review). `Cameron exposes numerous
weaknesses in how such books substantiate their claims', wrote one 2008
reviewer: `She shows that they over-emphasise insignificant linguistic and
cross-cultural research findings of difference between men and women's
talk, whereas the more common finding, that there are very few differences
between them and significantly more variation among groups of the same
gender, goes unreported. ... [W]hy does all this matter? Myths ... shape
our beliefs and influence our actions. This particular myth is deeply
embedded in our culture and provides a way of talking about and explaining
social relations that is deeply flawed and harmful.' (Red Pepper
February 2008).
Numerous members of the public responded to the book on-line: `We need
more books like this one', is a typical comment: `[Cameron] describes how
scientific evidence can be manufactured or twisted to suit the prejudices
of our society. She explores why these myths so often "ring true" for so
many people (humans are suggestible and prone to remember things that fit
their stereotypes, while forgetting things that don't), and why we're so
obsessed with gender and gender difference in the first place' (comments
collected on amazon.co.uk).

Parts of Mars and Venus were serialised in The Guardian,
with a follow-up article by Steven Poole (20 Oct 2007). To date, the book
has sold more than 682,300 copies and netted revenue of £49,450 for OUP.
Its high profile opened up opportunities for other kinds of engagement
with non-academic audiences such as teachers, school students,
professionals, and the public at large. The range of the activities
outlined below gives evidence of the interest this work has generated
outside academe, and the benefits it has had for particular groups of
non-academics.

Updating and enriching the teaching of language and gender in
secondary schools. `Language and gender' is a standard topic on
the main examining boards' syllabi for English Language A-level.
Cameron's research has had direct impact on the teaching of the topic at
A-level. The Myth of Mars and Venus is recommended reading for
A-level students (see the AQA Resources Lists for English Language A and
B); in addition, she features extensively on Kerboodle (online resources
produced by Nelson Thornes, the publishers of the two A-level textbooks
originally sanctioned by AQA as the "official" resources for the two
A-levels in English Language; these sell around 20,000 copies a year to
A-level students). She has taken part in training events for teachers
and English subject advisors, and speaks regularly at conferences for
English Language A-level students organized by the English and Media
Centre in London and by Language Live around the country -large events,
typically attracting 800 or 1000 participants. Through the book and
through her subsequent contact with teachers and students, Cameron's
work on language and gender has helped to update and enrich the teaching
of the subject at A-level, feeding in recent research findings and
moving the approach used at A-level closer to the approach used by
academic researchers. The current Chair of Examiners for AQA reports
that `Cameron's books have been very useful within our English Language
examining community' and that the exam board has used extracts from The
Myth of Mars and Venus on exam papers `to counter the types of
gender discourses promoted by writers such as John Gray'[1].
EMC conference organiser Dan Clayton confirms that `Debbie's talks at
the English and Media Centre's English Language Conference have gone a
long way towards updating both teachers' and A-level students'
understanding of the field of language and gender. In the past, there
has often been a tendency for A-level students to uncritically accept
stereotyped models of gender difference in spoken interaction, so
Debbie's work, drawing on The Myth of Mars and Venus, has been
excellent in offering a more nuanced understanding of differences
between and within the sexes. In addition to the lectures at the
conference, her research update, published on the EMC website, has
proved very useful in helping teachers keep up to date with the most
recent work on gender'[2]. In 2011 Cameron was invited to
become a patron of the English and Media Centre.

Enabling professional groups to engage with issues of language and
gender. As noted under (2) above, there are various professional
groups other than educators to whom issues of language and gender are of
practical relevance and concern. Cameron has been approached by
representatives of some of these groups to write articles for their
professional or trade publications, such as The Psychologist,
published by the British Psychological Association, and In Depth,
a trade journal for qualitative market researchers. She also contributed
on 6 November 2010 to a day seminar for women in (or considering going
into) politics, organised jointly by Camden Speakers' Association and a
number of women's political organisations. Laura Nelson, who organised
the occasion, reports that Cameron's `impassioned and informative speech
...designed to inspire young men and women to aspire to leadership
positions and not to be bound by false limitations of gender stereotypes
... helped the audience understand more about how powerful language is
in restricting our perceptions of ourselves.'

Enhancing public understanding of language, linguistics and gender
research. Thanks initially to the public interest in Mars and
Venus, Cameron has been widely sought after as a contributor to
broadcast media and other forms of public engagement with language. She
is regularly interviewed about her research and its topic. Several of
these interviews have been on serious radio and TV programmes which aim
to educate as well as entertain. Some programmes in this category are
specifically devoted to language, e.g. BBC Radio 4's series Fry's
English Delight, which made an extended version of the broadcast
interview available as a podcast; Swedish National Radio's weekly
programme Språket [`the language'][4]; and the
Canadian TV documentary `Love in 2013: Mars and Venus today' made by
Endless Media and broadcast on CBC, 14 Feb 2013 (9pm) (repeats on CBC
News Network Sat 16 Feb, 11PM ET and Sunday 17 Feb at 6 PM ET). The
producer and editor of Språket comments that Cameron's
`knowledge of the international trends in linguistic research and her
ability to make theory clear to a general audience were valuable
contributions to the program and much appreciated and commented on by
our listeners.'

Cameron has given invited talks at public events connected with
language-themed exhibitions, such as the `Our Speaking Selves'
conference (17 May 2009, 104 attendees) which accompanied an exhibition
devoted to the human voice at the Institute for Contemporary Art in
2009, and the British Library's `Evolving English' exhibition in 2011.
In 2010 she was one of four panellists at a forum debate on `Gendered
Behaviour: What Can Science Tell Us?' (Kings Place, London, 16
November), hosted by the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender
Studies in association with The Guardian and supported by
Cambridge University Press. The extent to which Cameron set the
parameters for discussion is indicated by how The Guardian
framed the debate in advance: `She takes issue with one of the central
claims that women have superior verbal abilities; some speculate that
this is linked to brain structure, others that it has an evolutionary
explanation. Cameron sees both as purely speculative, and insists that
explanations of difference must take account of three much more prosaic
factors. ... [1] that verbal behaviour is linked to "activity type" -
what someone usually spends much of their time doing. ... [2] verbal
differences reflect differences in power and status. ...where status is
not a factor there is no difference between men and women. ... [3]
Cameron argues that we use language to project our identity ... to
distinguish our sense of who we are in terms of class, life role as well
as gender, and all of these identities are socially constructed. Factor
out these variables, and you're left with no clear-cut differences in
how men and women use language.' The podcast recording on the Guardian
website attracted 132 comments in the 2 days open for responses. In 2012
Cameron spoke on language, gender and sexism in a series of public talks
organised by the Instituto Cervantes in London under the heading
`Linguistica para todos' (`linguistics for all') and attended largely by
Spanish-speakers living in the UK (total audience c. 30). She is
regularly contacted by listeners and audience members who wish to canvas
her opinion on questions of language, and features extensively on
popular blogs and discussion sites debating these matters.

Contributing to the quality and vitality of our cultural life.
Cameron has spoken about her work on language and gender at the Oxford
Literary Festival (April 2008), The Edinburgh Book Festival (August
2008), the Cambridge Festival of Ideas (October 2012), and most recently
the Hay Philosophy Festival in conversation with Simon Blackburn and
Carol Gilligan on gender, language and thought (May 2013; tickets sold
out). She has contributed to the work of the Royal Shakespeare Company,
which asked her to conduct a workshop on language and gender conflict
for the cast of its 2008 production of The Taming of the Shrew
as part of their rehearsal and preparation programme; she
contributed a short essay on the same topic for the programme offered to
audience members at performances of the play in Stratford.